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Friday, October 24, 2014

It is nice to hear back from clients of Pedigree Matching. In any one season I may make several hundred broodmare breeding recommendations and here is one letter that I just received from a client in Michigan.

"Norman

In 2011, you wrote me an analysis regarding my broodmare, Do Me Good. One of the sires you recommended was Rockin Image, who stands at Victory Hill Farm in LaGrange, Indiana. I took your advice and the result was Rockin Good. She was sold at the 2013 Hoosier Classic Yearling Sale to Mark and Jered Finn of Newton, Illinois for $9,500.

On June 19th, she qualified at Springfield, Illinois, in 1:55.1 without urging; and was briefly the Season's Leader for that effort. During the course of the summer, Rockin Good won the Elimination Heat of three legs of the Indiana Sires Stakes. Finally, on October 10th at Hoosier Park, she won her first final victory by a nose in 1:53.2, her lifetime mark. Last Saturday, October 18th, at Hoosier Park, Rockin Good won the Indiana 2 YO Filly Championship and Sires Stake in a time of 1:53.3. Her purses totaled $181,250 for the Finns.

Thanks for the (Rockin) good advice."

Ed

Ed Engle, Jr.

Engle Equine, LLC

Ed's success reminds me of one of my earliest clients from Michigan. Joan Ellafrits was the owner of one mare at the time and had read an article on Pedigree Matching in the USTA Hoofbeats magazine. She had bred her mare three times without success, basically using the closest and least expensive sire available to her - a strategy that is often used but also one with near zero success.

I recommended she breed to
a Michigan sire called Super Star Ranger. The result was a colt she
named Winsum Ranger. At three he was the winner of the Michigan State
Championship and went on to earn over $596,000 with 43 career wins and a record
of 1:56.2 taken at Woodbine.

Winsum Ranger was the first
really good horse that Joan ever bred or owned. She did it again with a
full brother now with over $122,000 and still racing. She also has a filly called
Keyanna Rose from a full sister to Winsum Ranger. That filly is also a winner of
the Michigan Championships, and was the best of her three year old year in
Michigan with over $451,000 made. Keyanna Rose is by Keystone Nordic, another
Pedigree Matching sire choice as is her brother Keyodee Star with $292,000 in the bank.

Joan, like many others who
have experienced Pedigree Matching in action, has shown that you don’t have to
be a big farm to produce top horses. Anyone can produce or buy a great horse
if they do their homework or at least get someone to help them with it.

Sunday, October 19, 2014

Are you still looking for a yearling that could be the next World Champion? Chances are that Harrisburg is the place to look. The largest sale in terms of entries can be a daunting task to find the right horse but if you prepare yourself by creating a short list of what you want, whether it is by sex, gait, jurisdiction or sire it will save you a lot of time when it comes to inspecting your choices in the flesh.

Most successful trainers like to see as many of the horses they can prior to the sale by visiting the farms where they can see the yearlings run in the paddock rather than depend upon the videos. For most prospective owners this is next to impossible unless they are self employed and can take a month off. Since it ultimately is the owners responsibility to pay the bills, not just for buying but for training and staking your purchases over the next nine months till they hopefully qualify to race, a good way to ensure that your investment is a wise one is to do your own research into the pedigrees.

Stallion profiles are an invaluable aid to short listing the sale entries. Every stallion has a profile based on the mares he has been successful with. You can even use the profile of a similar stallion when trying to predict the fate of first crop stallions whose progeny have yet to race. This year there are just a handful of first crop sires including Manofmanymissions and Roll With Joe, both with sizeable consignments. Roll With Joe is a full brother to Bettors Delight and you know what the profile of Bettors Delight is don't you. You don't ? Well join the majority of buyers at any sale who blindly follow their trainers into making bad decisions.

By tabulating the top performers by a particular sire to show the sire lines in their pedigrees you will see a pattern emerge than can be summarized in one or two sentences that key on the presence or absence of certain sire lines e.g. Meadow Skipper, Adios, Volomite, Big Towner etc. For Bettors Delight the profile has two factors and reads:

1. Non Meadow Skipper line dams with a second or third dam by Meadow Skipper, a son of Meadow Skipper or an Albatross line sire (11)

2. Most Happy Fella line dams with a second or third dam by an Adios line sire (5)

A quick scan of the top 16 shows that 15 of them have an Albatross line and 15 have an Adios line through Abercrombie (9), Bret Hanover (5) and Adios Vic (1)

If you go through the 36 Roll With Joe yearlings and eliminate on the basis of not having the requisite Meadow Skipper and Adios lines you cut the list to 17. It is shocking, to me at least, to note that the number of yearlings with Meadow Skipper line dams is 25 or 70%, while the percentage of the top 16 performers by Bettors Delight with Meadow Skipper line dams is the very opposite at 30% - now somebody is not doing their homework when it comes to selecting a stallion. And if you think the consignors of the 45 yearlings by Bettors Delight have done any better, with a profile that has not changed since his first crop hit the tracks in 2003, then think again because the number is slightly worse at 71% Meadow Skipper line dams.

Here are the profiles for the Trotting and pacing yearlings in Harrisburg. Now do your homework and put the percentages in your favor. The pedigrees are all in the PM Online database and if you sign up at the Guru level prior to the Harrisburg sale you can get your first year subscription at half price - that's a saving of $100 and you get my sale reports for Harrisburg for half price too and access to the PM Online library where the all important Stallion Profiles are kept. E-mail me to obtain these special offers with the subject "Harrisburg Offers".

Pedigree Matching

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About Me

Norman Hall is a long time active member of the Standardbred community in Atlantic Canada. He has been involved for over thirty years in the industry and has served the industry in many capacities. He has been the manager of the Prince Edward Island (PEI) Colt Stakes for the past 27 years as well as serving in periodic appointments as a director of the PEI Standardbred Horse Owners Association, as a director, volunteer manager and President of the Charlottetown Driving Park and as a founding member of the PEI Harness Racing Industry Association. He has been honoured by the PEISHOA as Active Horseman Of The Year for his volunteer activities and by The Atlantic Standardbred Breeders Association, with the prestigious Glen Kennedy Memorial Award, for his support of the breeding industry in Atlantic Canada. In addition to his involvement with breeding farms and breeders organizations in North America he has traveled extensively to give seminars on standardbred breeding throughout Europe, most recently conducting a five seminar tour in Denmark, Finland, Sweden and Norway, as well as seminars in Wales and Scotland. He has also traveled to Australia and New Zealand to assist breeding operations there as well as in Germany and France on several occasions.